Grand Slam

After checking out one of the venues for the weekend (Waiverly Baseball Club has a lot of work to do to get the grounds in order…), I was still on two hours sleep but I had to check out the Australian Open. I wanted to get there at 5pm because after 5 ground passes were only $20 so I could check some secondary matches out and say that I was at a tennis grand slam event. As I made my way to the ticket booth, a Belgian guy stopped me and asked if I wanted to by a single ticket to the secondary stadium, Hisense Arena, which would allow me access to everything but the main venue Rod Laver Stadium (the night match there was a 16 year-old Aussie who had become the youngest ever to win an Aussie Open match, so not really what I wanted to see anyway) and in the secondary arena…wait for it…Roddick v. some Belgian slouch. Face value was $60 but he only wanted $30 since his friend had flaked on him so I was in.

When we got to our seats (right on the side in the 8th row) it was the second set between an Argentinian and a Taiwanese player. The Argentinian, who was much bigger and clearly favorite, had taken the first set. The second set went to a tiebreaker with the Argentinian taking that as well, so it looked like the route was on. It was really cool sitting so close and watching guys that good play tennis at the highest level, not boring at all (the thing I didn’t like was that if you got up to get a beer you had to wait two games until the swap ends to get back to your seat…all the more reason to double up). Lu started making a comeback winning the third and fourth set and the group of about 15 young Taiwanese fans sitting three rows behind me were loving it. There was a drunk Aussie fan wearing a green and gold sombrero on the other side that started joining in on their chants and had everyone laughing between points. Heading into the fifth set I went to get another beer and saw the Aussie changing sides to sit with his new asian friends. I talked to him as we waited to be let in and asked if he had any idea what he was chanting and he said “no, Im just jumping on the bandwagon.” I was obviously pulling for Lu and he ended up winning (I didn’t even realize until I asked the Belgian dude at the end that the Argentinian, David Nambolinian was a top 10 player and it ended up being the biggest upset and best match of the tournament so far). It was easily the best tennis match I’ve ever seen (and probably the coolest atmosphere of any sporting event I’ve been to except UCLA/usc Dec. 2, 2006). And Roddick was still to come.

Before that match started the Belgian guy left to join some of his countrymen who had painted themselves black, red and gold (and I don’t think he wanted to watch the match next to an American). I was surprised to see that Roddick was a crowd favorite (mainly amongst women 18-44) but he dropped the first set and frankly watching him live my opinion of him went down. He yelled at the towel boy after losing a point and had pretty big rabbit ears looking up at the chanting Belgians each time he won a point. His serve was impressive from up close topping out at 225km/hr (no clue how that translates to mph). I ended up chatting with most of the people sitting around me including an asian-aussie uni student who told me she was studying abroad at Cal Poly SLO for the spring quarter and a group of middle-aged aussie women who were in love with Roddick (it was hard to get used to sitting in the stands and only being able to speak between points).As the fourth set dragged on past 10pm, I started to get nervous about catching a train home because I wasn’t really looking to stay in Melbourne until 5:25am again. Luckily Andy knew I was pressed for time so he finished him off and moved to the third round. At the train station I sat at the wrong platform for 40 minutes, and ended up barely catching the last train out at 12:05am after asking at the info desk. I got home at about 1am and was up at 8:30 to check out the other venue for the weekend. Altona has probably the best stadium setup I’ve seen in Australia except it is poorly maintained it is so far out in an industrial suburb you must be a really hardcore baseball fan to want to show up on Friday (I don’t even really want to go)…so we’ll see how the semi-finals go out there. In conclusion, I am pretty sure I can never go to another tennis match because it's doubtful I could have as much fun.